January–March •
January 9 –
Robert Walpole is made
Earl of Orford, and resigns as
First Lord of the Treasury and
Chancellor of the Exchequer, effectively ending his period as
Prime Minister of Great Britain. On his formally relinquishing office five days later, he will have served 20 years and 314 days as Prime Minister, the longest single term ever, and also longer than the accumulated terms of any other British Prime Minister. •
January 14 –
Edmond Halley dies;
James Bradley succeeds him as
Astronomer Royal of Great Britain. •
January 24 –
Charles VII becomes
Holy Roman Emperor. •
January 28? – The
House of Commons of Great Britain votes on the alleged rigging of the
Chippenham by-election. It becomes a
motion of no confidence, which leads to the resignation of
Robert Walpole. •
February 12 –
John Carteret, 2nd Lord Carteret becomes
Secretary of State for the Northern Department in Great Britain. •
February 15—
First Silesian War, part of
War of the Austrian Succession: Troops of the
Kingdom of Prussia, Saxony and France, under the command of Prince Dietrich of Anhalt-Dessau, capture the Moravian town of Iglau (now
Jihlava). At this point, the Saxons and French declare that their obligations to Prussia have ceased. •
February 16 –
Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, becomes
Prime Minister of Great Britain. •
February 22 –
Henry Fielding publishes his
picaresque novel Joseph Andrews anonymously in London when "the first edition... reached the bookstalls" in the city. •
March 15 •
Denmark-Norway concludes a treaty of friendship with France, a day after the expiration of its 1739 treaty with Great Britain. • The
Verendrye brothers take possession of South Dakota in the name of the King of France. •
March 29 – Acting in his capacity of
Grand Duke of Lithuania, Poland's King
Stanisław August Poniatowski issues a proclamation allowing
Jews in the Lithuanian capital of
Vilnius to live anywhere except for two public streets, the Pilies street and the Galves Street.
April –June •
April 13 –
George Frideric Handel's oratorio
The Messiah is first performed, in
Dublin,
Ireland in aid of local charities. •
May 17 –
Battle of Chotusitz:
Frederick the Great's army defeats the
Austrians. •
May 24 –
War of the Austrian Succession –
Battle of Sahay: French forces defeat the Austrians. •
May – In
Peru,
Juan Santos takes the name Atahualpa II, and begins an ill-fated rebellion against
Spanish rule. Father Domingo Garcia sends the first report of the rebellion to his superiors on June 2. •
June 7 –
Christian Goldbach first describes
Goldbach's conjecture ("Every even number is the sum of two primes") in a letter to fellow mathematician
Leonhard Euler. •
June 11 –
Peace of Breslau: Austria cedes
Silesia to
Prussia. •
June 20 –
İzmir, formerly the ancient Greek city of
Smyrna, is destroyed by fire.
July–September •
July 7 –
War of Jenkins' Ear:
Battle of Bloody Marsh – British troops repel those of
Spain (under Montiano), in the
Province of Georgia. •
July 14 –
William Pulteney is created 1st
Earl of Bath in Great Britain. •
August 17 • Accompanied by 10 French Army observers, Choctaw Indians from the French Louisiana territory cross the Tombigbee River and raid Chickasaw Indian towns in Georgia. Over three days, the attackers lose 50 men, the Chickasaw defenders about 25. For permitting the attack, the French Louisiana governor, the Sieur de Bienville, is summoned back to Paris. • Irish author and poet Dean
Jonathan Swift is declared by a court to be "of unsound mind and memory" and confined to home treatment for the remaining three years of his life. •
August 19 • A British fleet led by Commodore
William Martin enters the harbor of Naples with three warships, two frigates, and four bomb vessels, and sends a message giving the
King Charles VII of Naples (the future King Charles III of Spain) 30 minutes to agree to withdraw Neapolitan troops from the Spanish Army. Don Carlos agrees and ends the threat of a Spanish foothold in Italy. •
Voltaire's controversial play
Fanatacism, or Mahomet the Prophet is first performed, in Paris, to a theatre audience filled with French nobility. •
August 20 – The
Swedish-Russian War effectively ends as 17,000 Swedish troops surrender in
Finland at Helsingfors (
Helsinki). •
August 27 –
George Anson, captain of
HMS Centurion, arrives with his seriously ill crew at the island of
Tinian (now U.S. territory as one of the
Northern Mariana Islands) and saves his mission. •
September 5 – The 46 survivors of Russia's
Great Northern Expedition return to Petropavlovsk after having been shipwrecked on an island in the
Bering Strait ten months earlier. They had completed the building of a new ship from the wreckage of the
St Pyotr on August 21. •
September 16 – Construction starts on the
Foundling Hospital in
London.
October–December •
October 5 • Pedro Cebrian y Agustin, Count of Fuenclara, arrives at Veracruz to become the new Spanish
Viceroy of New Spain. •
Pennsylvania's Colonial Governor
George Thomas bars citizens from settling in Lancaster County, or west of the Blue Mountains. •
November 13 – The
Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters is founded. •
December 2 – The
Pennsylvania Journal first appears in the United States.
Date unknown • The
Lopukhina Conspiracy arises at the Russian court. • The
Afghan tribes unite as a monarchy. •
Daniel le Pelley succeeds
Nicolas le Pelley, as Seigneur of
Sark. •
Molde,
Norway, becomes a city. •
Eisenach, Germany builds its
Stadtschloss (city castle). • Spain completes the construction of
Fort Matanzas in the
Matanzas Inlet, approximately south of
St. Augustine, Florida. • The
University of Erlangen is founded in Bavaria. •
Anders Celsius publishes his proposal for a
centigrade temperature scale originated in
1741. •
Colin Maclaurin publishes his
Treatise on Fluxions. •
Charles Jervas's English translation of
Don Quixote is published posthumously. Through a printer's error, the translator's name is printed as 'Charles Jarvis', leading the book to forever be known as
the Jarvis translation. It is acclaimed as the most faithful English rendering of the novel made up to this time. • The Roman Catholic church decrees that Roman ceremonial practice in Latin (not in Chinese) is to be the law for Chinese missions. == Births ==